The concept
of a “network” spontaneously identifies with the idea of a “city”, if
for no other reason because of the way they evoke a smoothly knit system
of relations and functions underpinning both these notions. Needless to
say this identification goes way back into the past, starting with the
old city-state, the isolated, walled-in and self-sufficient polis capable
of radiating out a network of subordinated power relations or, at least,
powers of dissuasion, and reaching the modern city, openly integrated
in an endless array of connections feeding its intricate circulation of
information and decisions. In the postmodern era this situation evolved
even further, at least to the extent to which mobility and increasingly
refined means of communication have not just wiped out distances, they
have also eliminated the old network of locations and hierarchical scale
between small and large towns and cities. In the end, the cityscape has
turned into a mental place or cultural reference: no longer a clearly
defined spot on landscape but a momentary being-here-and-now marking an
order which is more temporal than spatial.
In a simulation like this, first defined back in the late 20th century,
the new and ever-spreading reality of computer technology and telematics
has emerged, altering the profundity or the urban design of modern-day
cities, not to the extent of undermining their historical premises but
certainly enough to mark a radical turning-point in how they are conceived.
The “web” is the urban reality of the age in which we live: a bodiless
reality finally wiping out space and time and giving rise to a different
line of thought based on simultaneity and immediacy. “The web is the urban
site now facing us”, so William J. Mitchell wrote in his La citta dei
bits (City of bits – Milan, 1998). But this is a brand new site that needs
totally rethinking. “This kind of city will be totally uprooted from any
definite point on earth”, so Mitchell goes on to say, “shaped by constraints
on connectivity and band width rather than accessibility and the positions
of properties, largely out-of-synch in how it operates, inhabited by bodiless,
fragmented subjects existing as collections of aliases and electronic
agents. Its places will be constructed virtually by software programmes
and not physically out of stone and wood; these places will be connected
by logical bonds instead of doors, corridors and roads. “But this forces
us to ask a crucial question that the future of architectural design will
have to focus its resources on: how will this kind of city be organized
and what will its socio-cultural fate actually be? Or, to quote Mitchell
again: “What kind of forum will we give the city of bits? Who will be
our Hippodamus?”
A possible answer to this question comes from Russia in the form of the
“Bio-City” project designed by Michail Kudryashov and his assistants.
Kudryashov has not just come up with a technological city, whose concept
of a web is merely a means to an implicit end, he has actually aimed at
designing a city that beats to the same rhythms as living organism capable
of adapting to various situations by altering its own structures, growing
or shrinking according to the community’s needs. The “network” here takes
on organic form. The comparison with a living body is more than just a
similarity: it is a model closely embodying the old utopian dream of a
city shaped around the functional/hierarchical structure of the human
body. Electronic devices, computer logic and the potential of telematics
here act like simple devices, whose worth does not depend on their efficiency
but rather the role they play in the entire system. The technological
optimism that is now so widespread, seeing technology as providing a solution
to all our problems and ignoring the constitutive absence of meaning this
explicitly denounces, is replaced by utopian optimism, still basically
unresolved, setting a simple scenario solely guaranteed by that deeper
meaning from the ethical component intrinsic to utopian planning. Talking
about his Bio-City, Kudryashov tells us that “the city turns into a pulsating
heart a slow beat.” Bio-City adjusts to the flow of presences in different
place and at different times of day, actually changing colour to represent
different functional states of affairs. “The various areas of the city
differ in terms of function, and the behavior of the bio-dome looming
above them changes with changes in situation. Even the appearance of the
bio-layer covering it depends on the population’s behaviour: e.g. it turns
red in case of danger… This means we are faced with a Chameleon-city or
Organism-city that safeguards and protects its population. In a word:
A Reasoning City.”
As we can see, Kudryashov`s Bio-City seems to appeal more to feelings
and emotions than to reason. Nobody expects utopia to analyse its own
feasibility and consistency, and it is obvious that the important thing
about this project is its ethical ends, its social drive expressed in
terms of deep psychology. A city that turns into the body and life blood
of its inhabitants and lives their states of mind contains within it a
certain mystical element in relation to which not just technological instrumentalism
but also planning and programming become sterile exercises in conceptualism.
Technological utopia and organic utopia lie at both ends of a scale on
which they are the most far-fetched projections. What we can do already
is to re-think the city, a fertile melting-port of technology and feelings,
starting with its architecture, so as to insist on rediscovering its authentic
humanization.
This is a difficult but not impossible task. A master of the 20th century
– and also the 21st to tell the truth – like John Johansen – has worked
hard on prospects like this, even envisaging architecture designed and
built according to principles governing the growth of human DNA. He has
even designed (l`Arca 179, March 2003) a “Growing House” based on the
idea of molecular engineering. Artificial DNA provides the basic material,
kept in a liquid state as the “seed” for instructing molecules that will
self-replicate in large quantities. “So-called “morphability” or the transforming
of a substance or elements into a certain form, position or quality, “so
Johansen writes, “will be one of the features of all MNT (Molecular Nano
Technology) products in the future. (…) Substances can be programmed to
be soft, flexible, rigid or hard, in order to let furniture meet the occupant’s
needs to change position.”
In this case the technology is constructive and not computerized, but
provides the essential reference point for a carefully designed utopia,
which, most significantly, is based on real possibilities, although at
the moment still only possible in the laboratory. This is what we might
call a utopia of meditation in which anthropologic inspiration feeds on
technical feasibility and scientific tests, which are reasonably reliable
for research capable of counterbalancing the visionary dream of setting
created for human happiness.
What really counts about this vision of the future is actually the key
role the city and architecture still play in relation to socio-cultural
progress of the society in which we live. Despite the diversity of the
sometimes rather radical ideas put forward, they all share the common
denominator of a “network” as a hub of relations and exchanges on a par,
which ever since ancient times, have always been at the heart of urban
agglomerates. It is no coincidence that history teaches us that all renewal,
desire for progress and, if you like, every revolution have always taken
cities as places of information, confrontation and mass communication,
the driving force behind them. But the space of a city is the space in
which its architecture is located, shaping both individual and communal
behavior, tracing its developments and adapting to them through constant
change. This means urban design concludes, as was the case with the masters
of modern architecture, with social planning; and, in this light, the
biosphere and bitsphere can come together to create a truly living, human
and creative environment.